IDC Sees Global Tablet Shipments Declining for 2nd Straight Year

IDC sees 2016 global tablet shipments declining for the second straight year, dropping 9.6 percent from 2015, the firm said in a Thursday report. The tablet market “has seen its peak,” and will face down years in 2016 and 2017, though detachable tablet growth will trigger “a slight rebound in 2018 and beyond,” it said. Detachable tablets are only 16 percent of the market, but their share will nearly double to 31 percent in 2020, it said. Tablet makers “are slowly shifting focus toward the detachable tablet market segment,” which has quickly resulted in increased product offerings, lower average selling prices and broadened consumer awareness for the category, it said. “Many traditional PC manufacturers have assumed the detachable category to be a natural extension of the PC market and perhaps assumed it would rightfully be theirs to capture. Now they find themselves in head-to-head competition with a slew of new manufacturers that have created their market off of smartphone and slate tablet growth.”